A Doctor's Touch
by Eledhwen
Summary: A series of ficlets focusing on the minor characters, who move in and out of the Doctor's life but don't hang around. Number two: Diana Goddard, after "Dalek".
1. Clive

_**Disclaimer:**__ How I wish I owned them! Anyway, I don't; they're the property of the BBC._

**Clive**

He was just a boy, and afterwards others would say he'd been imagining things, but Clive was always certain what he saw that day. The tendrils of ivy wrapping themselves around his scout leader's neck; the couple who appeared and wrested the thing away; the blue police box disappearing into nowhere. Even though the leader (quite recovered, though nursing a nasty bruise around his neck) swore blind he'd just got caught up, Clive knew what he'd witnessed. The plant had come alive, had attacked the group, would have succeeded had the strangers not rescued them.

It took the threat of a psychologist and sustained bullying at school for him to stop insisting that he was right, and he subsided into a lonely silence. But in private, after school and on weekends, he scoured the microfilm archives at the library, spent his pocket money on copies of the weird stories. He kept a file under his bed that, in a few years, had grown into a box. One box became two, and four by the end of university. Only the appearance (late) on the scene of girls tore Clive's attention away from his search for the man in a leather coat, and the ivy incident was pushed to the back of his mind for the first time in a few years.

Some years later, Clive discovered the internet, and about the same time the old boxes of yellowing paper surfaced in the attic. His wife scoffed, but Clive's interest was rekindled. He knew what he'd seen and his dreams – or rather his nightmares – were once again woven with the strings of ivy, the man's blue light, the sound of the police box.

They had arguments about it. They argued after Rose Tyler had visited, with her own tale of seeing the man Clive now knew as the Doctor. His wife thought it was madness. Clive, suggesting a late-night shopping trip, was certain it was not.

He never found out that he was, and always had been, perfectly sane.


	2. Diana

_**Disclaimer:** How I wish I owned them! Anyway, I don't; they're the property of the BBC._

**Diana**

Three weeks after she had supervised the pouring of concrete into the Utah bunker, and had ensured that Henry Van Statten was suitably amnesic, Diana Goddard opened the door of her new San Francisco flat to a man in a navy greatcoat.

Diana had long learned to read people quickly. The man in the greatcoat was smiling – a smile calculated to bypass the recipient's head – but there was something about him that sparked warning bells. He might look charming, but she was sure he was dangerous.

"Diana Goddard?" said the man. American accent, American teeth.

"Who's asking?" she asked.

He leaned on the doorway. "Captain Jack Harkness. I represent the Torchwood Institute."

That did ring a bell. There had been letters from Torchwood among Van Statten's papers, the papers Diana was still going through.

"What do you want?"

"To talk," said Captain Jack Harkness, easily. "That's all. I'll talk on the doorstep unless you fancy inviting me in."

She stood back, and let him through, closing the door afterwards. "Through here," she said, showing him into the living room. "Drink?"

"No thanks," said Jack Harkness, not sitting down. "I've come about the Van Statten thing."

"How did you know about that?" Diana asked. "If that Adam came running to you ..."

"Adam's not the source," Harkness returned, with a grin. "He won't be a problem. I heard all about it from the Doctor."

Diana pulled out a chair and sat. "Oh." She thought back, remembered the alien anger of the man calling himself the Doctor. "Why did he send you?"

Harkness shrugged. "Number of reasons. He's busy. He was worried you might not recognise him – he's ... changed a bit since you saw him."

"It was three weeks ago!" Diana exclaimed.

"For you. For him it was several years. When he met you he hadn't met me. Somehow, with everything else, he's remembered this." There was an odd expression on Harkness's face; part envy, part wistfulness.

Diana was not sure she understood, but she did know she wanted Harkness out.

"The bunker's sealed. Van Statten's in Springfield, Iowa, just got a job as a bank clerk. Doesn't remember a thing. There's no fallout, Captain. I did my job."

"And well," agreed Harkness, grinning again. She tried to ignore it. "But there's still you, Diana Goddard, the efficient PA with knowledge way beyond what you should possess." He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Did you offer a drink? Maybe I'll have a coffee."

Diana stood up and went to make it, busying herself with mugs and the plunger so she did not have to look at Harkness and his sharp blue gaze.

"The thing is," said Harkness, "your Dalek wasn't the first this planet has encountered, not on a linear timescale. Three years ago the Daleks moved the Earth, invaded the world."

Turning with the coffee mugs, Diana laughed aloud. "I'd have remembered that," she said. "We'd all have remembered that."

Harkness shook his head, moving to take his coffee from her. "Nobody remembers it, not now. You think you did a good job erasing the memories of Van Statten's people, try persuading an entire planet. Took a while." He sipped his coffee. Diana, lost for words, followed suit. "Luckily, retconning one person is a bit easier. The Doctor asked me to wipe out all traces of that Dalek, just like we wiped all traces of the invasion. I need any papers you have."

"Papers?"

The captain lost his smile. "I've got approximately five minutes, Miss Goddard, before you fall unconscious."

"You've drugged me? When?" Diana peered at her coffee, wondering how he had managed it.

"When I took my coffee," Harkness said. "Papers. I'm sure you've got a whole bundle from Van Statten."

Diana found herself yawning. "I have no papers," she said.

Harkness took her coffee from her and put it down. "Yeah, you do."

She looked up at him and his uncompromising stare, and realised there was probably no way out. Unlike Van Statten, who for all his bluster and arrogance was easy to manage, Harkness knew his own mind. There was something in those eyes that was older and stranger than the captain's clean-cut good looks.

"In the spare bedroom," she said. "Filing cabinet." She fished the key out on its chain and handed it over.

"Thank you," he said, taking it from her. "Appreciated."

"How did you meet the Doctor?" Diana asked, yawning again.

He smiled. "World War Two. I tried to con him, and he saved my life."

"World War Two?" She blinked at his increasingly blurry figure. "That's impossible."

"Nothing's impossible," Harkness said. "Go to sleep, Diana Goddard."

Later on she awoke in her chair; two mugs drying on the rack and the filing cabinet empty. Something seemed to be missing, but she never worked out what it was.


End file.
